Aphelia felt a razor of relief. Good thing she’d burned these things out before the storm of their evolution grew fangs.

Next came the mess inside the sealing array, the ash after the tide.

She turned to deal with the remains, when a whoosh knifed the air behind her. She sprang back on instinct, an arrow kissing past her ear like a cold moth’s wing.

“What?!”

Two more arrows came on its heels, silent as snakes in grass. She caught a flash of Runes on the shafts, and dread tightened first, then muscles. Still airborne, she braced on a micro array blooming between her hands, pivoted like a dancer in midair, and let the arrows comb past.

She chose right. The arrows flared apart not far behind her, blooming into black mist like rotting night. It reeked of layered toxins; even a Titleholder would lock up for a breath. An assassin only needs that one frost-bitten heartbeat.

“Who are you? Get out here!”

She raised both hands before her chest and roared on purpose, a thunderclap to buy time, while her senses rippled outward like a spreading lake.

Another three-shot burst lanced from the void, this time a clear line from the direction of her sealing array.

Crimson fire unfurled from her palm, a burning screen that turned the oncoming arrows to drifting ash. Relief pricked through her heat; at least they weren’t rich enough to waste Titleholder-grade arrows as throwaways.

Inside the scarlet array, a crack opened like a wound. The mangled bodies of the shadows stood as pillars, propping the rift. Through the lattice of the seal, she felt their life ebb like leaking ink, replaced by a portal that steadied with every fading beat.

With no living target left, the scarlet seal unraveled on its own, leaving a bare magic array etched on the ground. Most of the Arcane Power that drove it flowed back into her veins like a warm tide.

She wasn’t going to stand there and let something stroll through. Riding the returning Arcane Power, silver light rang in her hands, and a man-high array snapped into being, aimed straight at the half-spread gate.

“Spatial Magic—Spatial Detonation!”

The void shuddered like struck glass and hurled that quake at the portal. It didn’t break. A pale hand reached through, caught the tiny throat of the gate, and ripped it wider like tearing silk.

“What in hell can rip space?!”

A shadow with a longbow vaulted out, his arrow already set, the point steady as a viper’s eye on Aphelia. More shadows followed with blades and clubs, bodies armored in bone plates or keratin like anti-magic hide. In their middle stood a thin, bookish man with a middle-aged face like a paper mask.

The moment he arrived, heat flared from her nerves before thought. The air around her ignited, deep crimson flames circling like a predator’s halo. Those evolving shadows were bad enough, thorns in memory, but this man felt worse. Grace sat on him like fake snow; under it, madness howled. She found herself stepping back a pace.

“Wonderful. You slipped his triple volley with such grace, even thought to counter. As expected of the strong.”

He clapped, words smooth as oil, eyes roaming the blood-scented field.

“A first meeting—though it’s rude to greet you in all this iron stink.”

He saw her guarded stance. He smiled, dipped a courteous bow, and waved his shadows to hold, leashes tight, no reckless charge through fire.

What gripped Aphelia more was the portal behind him. It didn’t close with their arrival; it sat there steady, a black well. If they started, and she didn’t smash it first, more would pour out like ants from a split hill. Past the gate, something worse breathed, a depth that made her skin prickle. Their goal, then, demanded thought.

If they wanted her dead, they could’ve sent that dreadful thing first. If she ran, they might not cage her. So why this theater?

“Who are you? Why barge in here?”

He smiled to her shout, voice warm as a spring wind that hides a thorn. “A first meeting… ah, no. You’ve crossed blades with my army, or my subordinates, many times. Miss, this time I came to…”

“If you’re here to ask me to bend the knee, save your breath.”

The deep blaze around her said it for her. A demon mask writhed in the flames, hungry for the taste of enemy blood.

Her answer didn’t ruffle him. He only smiled, almost gentle. “Don’t get excited. Those small fry don’t matter. Dead is dead. They’re low-grade consumables at best. Look at them, then look at what stands by me. Which one’s higher class? You’re sharp. You know.”

She didn’t answer him, but the truth slid cold. The ones she’d fought before weren’t this dire. This evolution chilled the bones. If it had no leash…

Seeing her thoughtful look, the man’s smile widened. Then excitement cracked it, and feral lines cut his brow. He shouted, voice foaming with zeal.

“Yes. Yes! You’ve got an eye. Near-infinite evolution! With a bit of cultivation, decades, even centuries to forge a Titleholder? In front of these things, that’s a joke. Raised right, they replace the army’s big killers, fit any doctrine, any battlefield—”

She cut across his flood. “Circle all you want. What do you want from me? Plenty of your people died to me. Not afraid they’ll revolt?”

He didn’t like being stopped; the collar tug gave him away. He coughed, then pasted on that mild tone again. “Simple. I want you to lead them. How about it? A perfect offer. Oh, of course, after my… modification, you’ll be fit to lead them.”

His eyes lost all calm. Spit flecked his lips as he talked. He looked at Aphelia like a lab rat, not a person.

That was the end of talk. She moved first. A crimson afterimage tore the air, and her fist crashed into the bowman shadow like a falling meteor.

She didn’t go for the chatterbox. Two blade-shadows flanked him like shears. If she aimed for him, they’d catch the strike, and the archer would stitch in support. A lunatic like that always holds a last card; even if she landed the blow, the ring would snap shut. If the “man” was a puppet, she’d walk herself into the snare.

She tried to probe him, but the twisted reek from the shadows smudged her senses like smoke in the eyes. On him, her perception slid off.

So she chose to break the bow first and cut the sky out of their hands.

“Flame Magic—”

A simple array spun up around the archer, red as a brand. The nature of her fire did the speaking. That keratin “anti-magic skin” withered under her heat like frost under noon.

“Wildfire Scorches the Fields!”

Crimson erupted and became a rain of flame. The bowman at the heart of the array vanished into the blaze, not even a cinder left behind.